The follow-up professional development focuses on helping new teachers who have implemented Inspire Science expand their depth of understanding of the resources of the program. This session includes topics related to effective instruction and classroom customization. All follow-up implementation trainings include a deeper review of the curriculum digital platform and resources.
Pick up some pre-developed and ready to implement systems and protocols for your science classrooms here! The programs covered are available today and aim to protect liability, increase lab awareness, and act as a resource for science teachers at all schools. Curious about chemicals? We will cover how to access the district Hazcom program and training; including SDS protocols, Chemical Disposal, fume hoods, and general housekeeping. Eager for Emergency preparedness? Learn about the importance of emergency equipment inspections, fire extinguishers, spill kits and fire blankets. We will also go over how to correct and prevent Fire Marshall violations in your classroom. Striving for Safety? Come learn about Risks' Health and Safety Program and leave with a pre-made lab safety checklist for use in your classroom. Have questions? Members of the Risk team will be present and happy to help! We look forward to seeing you in our session!
Pick up some pre-developed and ready to implement systems and protocols for your science classrooms here! The programs covered are available today and aim to protect liability, increase lab awareness, and act as a resource for science teachers at all schools. Curious about chemicals? We will cover how to access the district Hazcom program and training; including SDS protocols, Chemical Disposal, fume hoods, and general housekeeping. Eager for Emergency preparedness? Learn about the importance of emergency equipment inspections, fire extinguishers, spill kits and fire blankets. We will also go over how to correct and prevent Fire Marshall violations in your classroom. Striving for Safety? Come learn about Risks' Health and Safety Program and leave with a pre-made lab safety checklist for use in your classroom. Have questions? Members of the Risk team will be present and happy to help! We look forward to seeing you in our session!
This hands-on, immersive experience is designed to help educators deepen their understanding of the effective and practical strategies to facilitate academic discourse that promotes inclusive science and STEM classrooms. Educators will engage as learners in a variety of intentionally planned instructional strategies and collaborative group discourse structures, that promote access to scientific discourse and opportunities to collaborate with peers. In addition, we will be discussing the shift away from traditional talk patterns- like I-R-E (Initiate, Response, Evaluation) and towards Productive Talk to promote inclusive science and STEM classrooms. Resources used include the Talk Science Primer and the 9 Productive Talk Moves. A digital resource collection of all resources used will be provided.
Have you ever wondered why Arizona has so much copper compared to the rest of the country or how that copper got there? In this lesson, teachers will learn an engaging and math-rich method to model the concentration of copper in various types of rocks. They will also develop a demonstration to illustrate the cutting-edge geological theory explaining science’s best ideas about how copper gets to the places we find it in the Earth’s crust.
This initial professional development focuses on introducing TUSD teachers to the Inspire Science curriculum, focusing on introducing teachers to the resources and instructional path of the curriculum. The session includes a pedagogical overview, along with a detailed exploration of the 5-E instructional framework, including whole-group labs and investigations within the program. All PD sessions are structured so teachers are engaged in interactive explorations of both teacher and student resources.
This dynamic workshop introduces educators to powerful visual tools for developing students' systems thinking capacities. Drawing from the Waters Center's Habits of a Systems Thinker, participants will explore how tools like behavior-over-time graphs, connection circles, and causal loop diagrams can help learners "consider how mental models affect current reality and the future," while strengthening their ability to "identify the circular nature of complex cause and effect relationships." Through hands-on activities using examples from science (like predator-prey relationships and chemical equilibrium) and mathematics (like compound interest and exponential growth), participants will discover how these tools make thinking visible and deepen understanding across all subject areas. Participants will gain practical experience using new online modeling tools to create and share visual representations of systems – from simple stock/flow diagrams to more complex feedback models. Please bring a laptop or tablet, as we'll be working extensively with digital tools to build and refine systems models that can be immediately implemented in your classroom.
This initial professional development focuses on introducing TWDL teachers to the Spanish Inspire Science curriculum, focusing on introducing teachers to the Spanish resources and instructional path of the curriculum. The session includes a pedagogical overview, along with a detailed exploration of the 5-E instructional framework, including whole-group labs and investigations within the program. All PD sessions are structured so teachers are engaged in interactive explorations of both teacher and student resources.
In this lesson, teachers will learn an activity that simulates the job a field geologist attempting to model a copper ore body at the site of suspected igneous rocks as determined by a geologic map. The lesson incorporates the use of technology in the form of Vernier LabQuests and magnetic field probes to initially detect the presence of a possible copper ore but is adaptable if similar equipment is not available. After detecting the ore, teachers will then explore ideas about core drilling with boba straws to obtain the most accurate three-dimensional model of the ore body.
Science Teachers are welcome to attend this session to get introduced to SchoolCity Science Assessment resources and recommended uses for helping students prepare for AzSCI and ACT Science assessments. Some familiarity with SchoolCity helps, but is not required.
This hands-on, immersive experience is designed to help educators deepen their understanding of an effective and practical strategy to support students with the Science and Engineering Practice of Asking Questions called the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), a method that teaches students to generate and refine their own questions, fostering critical thinking and enhancing phenomena-based learning. Participants will observe a phenomenon from a OpenSciEd High School Lesson, collaborate in a small group utilizing intentional discourse structures, to revise and develop testable questions for the causes of the phenomenon. Resources include an OpenSciEd Lesson, a structured, collaborative questioning form for engaging students with the QFT, guidance and question stems for helping students revise questions, student discourse table structures, and sentence stems for support with developing a whole class Driving Question Board (DQB).
Pick up some pre-developed and ready to implement systems and protocols for your science classrooms here! The programs covered are available today and aim to protect liability, increase lab awareness, and act as a resource for science teachers at all schools. Curious about chemicals? We will cover how to access the district Hazcom program and training; including SDS protocols, Chemical Disposal, fume hoods, and general housekeeping. Eager for Emergency preparedness? Learn about the importance of emergency equipment inspections, fire extinguishers, spill kits and fire blankets. We will also go over how to correct and prevent Fire Marshall violations in your classroom. Striving for Safety? Come learn about Risks' Health and Safety Program and leave with a pre-made lab safety checklist for use in your classroom. Have questions? Members of the Risk team will be present and happy to help! We look forward to seeing you in our session!
Pick up some pre-developed and ready to implement systems and protocols for your science classrooms here! The programs covered are available today and aim to protect liability, increase lab awareness, and act as a resource for science teachers at all schools. Curious about chemicals? We will cover how to access the district Hazcom program and training; including SDS protocols, Chemical Disposal, fume hoods, and general housekeeping. Eager for Emergency preparedness? Learn about the importance of emergency equipment inspections, fire extinguishers, spill kits and fire blankets. We will also go over how to correct and prevent Fire Marshall violations in your classroom. Striving for Safety? Come learn about Risks' Health and Safety Program and leave with a pre-made lab safety checklist for use in your classroom. Have questions? Members of the Risk team will be present and happy to help! We look forward to seeing you in our session!
Providing an in-depth, collaborative, and project-based learning experience to spark student interest in your high school science classroom.
An effective way to promote inquiry in the classroom and empower students to take ownership of their learning is through the use of a driving question board (DQB). After exploring the unit-level phenomena and discussing a science probe, students can generate and post their questions on the DQB. This process helps them uncover preconceptions and provides a foundation for breaking down complex ideas into smaller, manageable investigations. As they work through module-level activities such as Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning (CER), students engage in meaningful exploration. The ultimate goal is to make science interactive and relevant by incorporating real-world connections, including module-level elaborations on STEM careers, the nature of science, and other application-based opportunities.
Participants will explore the neurobiology of trauma and its impact on brain development, mood, and behavior, particularly in children. Through engaging in the Brain Architecture Game, they will gain hands-on experience to deepen their understanding of trauma's effects and identify strategies for fostering resilience and promoting healing.
This hands-on, immersive experience is designed to help educators deepen their understanding of an effective and practical strategy to support students with the Science and Engineering Practice of Asking Questions called the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), a method that teaches students to generate and refine their own questions, fostering critical thinking and enhancing phenomena-based learning. Participants will observe a phenomenon from a OpenSciEd High School Lesson, collaborate in a small group utilizing intentional discourse structures, to revise and develop testable questions for the causes of the phenomenon. Resources include an OpenSciEd Lesson, a structured, collaborative questioning form for engaging students with the QFT, guidance and question stems for helping students revise questions, student discourse table structures, and sentence stems for support with developing a whole class Driving Question Board (DQB).
Agrivoltaics is an exciting method of land use in which the same land is used for both growing food and producing solar energy. Agrivoltaics has the potential to mitigate some of the challenges with current food production, including water availability and energy needs, while increasing crop yields. In this session, you will become familiar with agrivoltiacs and learn ways to explore this science with your students through hands-on investigations. Students’ experiential learning with agrivoltaics kits provides a rich opportunity for teaching across the curriculum and for tapping into diverse funds of knowledge. You will leave with ideas for three-dimensional learning activities that are standards-aligned and adaptable for grades 6-12.
Pick up some pre-developed and ready to implement systems and protocols for your science classrooms here! The programs covered are available today and aim to protect liability, increase lab awareness, and act as a resource for science teachers at all schools. Curious about chemicals? We will cover how to access the district Hazcom program and training; including SDS protocols, Chemical Disposal, fume hoods, and general housekeeping. Eager for Emergency preparedness? Learn about the importance of emergency equipment inspections, fire extinguishers, spill kits and fire blankets. We will also go over how to correct and prevent Fire Marshall violations in your classroom. Striving for Safety? Come learn about Risks' Health and Safety Program and leave with a pre-made lab safety checklist for use in your classroom. Have questions? Members of the Risk team will be present and happy to help! We look forward to seeing you in our session!
Pick up some pre-developed and ready to implement systems and protocols for your science classrooms here! The programs covered are available today and aim to protect liability, increase lab awareness, and act as a resource for science teachers at all schools. Curious about chemicals? We will cover how to access the district Hazcom program and training; including SDS protocols, Chemical Disposal, fume hoods, and general housekeeping. Eager for Emergency preparedness? Learn about the importance of emergency equipment inspections, fire extinguishers, spill kits and fire blankets. We will also go over how to correct and prevent Fire Marshall violations in your classroom. Striving for Safety? Come learn about Risks' Health and Safety Program and leave with a pre-made lab safety checklist for use in your classroom. Have questions? Members of the Risk team will be present and happy to help! We look forward to seeing you in our session!
This lesson focuses on the twin imperatives of a mining engineer: get as much copper out of the earth while spending the least amount of money and making the smallest impact on the environment as possible. This lesson flows most naturally from the previous one, “A Peek Below,” but the basic concepts from that lesson will be very briefly reviewed for teachers unable to attend both sessions. In this lesson, teachers will review mathematical formulas and principles for describing area, volume, mass, density, and concentration and apply these concepts to design a mine that maximizes profits for its investors while minimizing the impact on the environment. This lesson requires at least a 6th-grade proficiency in math but is adaptable all the way through calculus.
Providing an in-depth, collaborative, and project-based learning experience to spark student interest in your middle level science classroom.
A powerful approach to fostering inquiry in the classroom and encouraging students to take ownership of their learning is by engaging them with module-level phenomena and lesson-level science probes. This process allows students to identify and challenge their preconceptions, laying the groundwork for breaking down complex concepts into smaller, actionable investigations. Through lesson-level activities such as Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning (CER), students participate in meaningful exploration. The overarching goal is to make science engaging and relevant by integrating real-world connections, including lesson-level explorations of STEM careers, the nature of science, and other practical, application-based opportunities.
Participants will explore the neurobiology of trauma and its impact on brain development, mood, and behavior, particularly in children. Through engaging in the Brain Architecture Game, they will gain hands-on experience to deepen their understanding of trauma's effects and identify strategies for fostering resilience and promoting healing.
This initial professional development focuses on introducing TUSD teachers to the Inspire Science curriculum, focusing on introducing teachers to the resources and instructional path of the curriculum. The session includes a pedagogical overview, along with a detailed exploration of the 5-E instructional framework, including whole-group labs and investigations within the program. All PD sessions are structured so teachers are engaged in interactive explorations of both teacher and student resources.
This dynamic workshop introduces educators to powerful visual tools for developing students' systems thinking capacities. Drawing from the Waters Center's Habits of a Systems Thinker, participants will explore how tools like behavior-over-time graphs, connection circles, and causal loop diagrams can help learners "consider how mental models affect current reality and the future," while strengthening their ability to "identify the circular nature of complex cause and effect relationships." Through hands-on activities using examples from science (like predator-prey relationships and chemical equilibrium) and mathematics (like compound interest and exponential growth), participants will discover how these tools make thinking visible and deepen understanding across all subject areas. Participants will gain practical experience using new online modeling tools to create and share visual representations of systems – from simple stock/flow diagrams to more complex feedback models. Please bring a laptop or tablet, as we'll be working extensively with digital tools to build and refine systems models that can be immediately implemented in your classroom.
Agrivoltaics is an exciting method of land use in which the same land is used for both growing food and producing solar energy. Agrivoltaics has the potential to mitigate some of the challenges with current food production, including water availability and energy needs, while increasing crop yields. In this session, you will become familiar with agrivoltiacs and learn ways to explore this science with your students through hands-on investigations. Students’ experiential learning with agrivoltaics kits provides a rich opportunity for teaching across the curriculum and for tapping into diverse funds of knowledge. You will leave with ideas for three-dimensional learning activities that are standards-aligned and adaptable for grades 6-12.
Pick up some pre-developed and ready to implement systems and protocols for your science classrooms here! The programs covered are available today and aim to protect liability, increase lab awareness, and act as a resource for science teachers at all schools. Curious about chemicals? We will cover how to access the district Hazcom program and training; including SDS protocols, Chemical Disposal, fume hoods, and general housekeeping. Eager for Emergency preparedness? Learn about the importance of emergency equipment inspections, fire extinguishers, spill kits and fire blankets. We will also go over how to correct and prevent Fire Marshall violations in your classroom. Striving for Safety? Come learn about Risks' Health and Safety Program and leave with a pre-made lab safety checklist for use in your classroom. Have questions? Members of the Risk team will be present and happy to help! We look forward to seeing you in our session!
Pick up some pre-developed and ready to implement systems and protocols for your science classrooms here! The programs covered are available today and aim to protect liability, increase lab awareness, and act as a resource for science teachers at all schools. Curious about chemicals? We will cover how to access the district Hazcom program and training; including SDS protocols, Chemical Disposal, fume hoods, and general housekeeping. Eager for Emergency preparedness? Learn about the importance of emergency equipment inspections, fire extinguishers, spill kits and fire blankets. We will also go over how to correct and prevent Fire Marshall violations in your classroom. Striving for Safety? Come learn about Risks' Health and Safety Program and leave with a pre-made lab safety checklist for use in your classroom. Have questions? Members of the Risk team will be present and happy to help! We look forward to seeing you in our session!
This hands-on, immersive experience is designed to help educators deepen their understanding of the effective and practical strategies to facilitate academic discourse that promotes inclusive science and STEM classrooms. Educators will engage as learners in a variety of intentionally planned instructional strategies and collaborative group discourse structures, that promote access to scientific discourse and opportunities to collaborate with peers. In addition, we will be discussing the shift away from traditional talk patterns- like I-R-E (Initiate, Response, Evaluation) and towards Productive Talk to promote inclusive science and STEM classrooms. Resources used include the Talk Science Primer and the 9 Productive Talk Moves. A digital resource collection of all resources used will be provided.
Arizona is the Copper State because our crustal rocks contain 1000 times more copper than typical crustal rocks elsewhere, but even at 1% copper, 99% of the rocks are unusable given our current technological capabilities. In this lesson, teachers will learn one way metallurgists separate copper from its ore using electrochemistry and compete to optimize an electrowinning cell to produce the most copper in the shortest time. This lesson features chemistry and physics applications but is also adaptable to other middle and high school science contexts.
Join Sarah Reed from the Children's Advocacy Center of Southern Arizona for "Understanding ACEs." This session includes an overview of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study, including national and local ACEs data. In addition, this training discusses trauma, historical and racial trauma and the ways in which ACEs and trauma impact short term and long-term health outcomes of children and adults.
